Friday, December 05, 2008

Comics Out Thursday December 4th, 2008 (Morrison's Batman))

Batman 682.

Superhero origin stories are told again and again -- even Superman is getting a new one, which is just silly at this point, yeah? The trick is, what are you going to add to the story that was not there before persuasively. How many times have I seen that bat crash through Batman's window? Lots of times. How many times has it occurred to me that the bat is surely dead as a result of the crash through the window? Zero. That there would be a mess to clean up? Zero. That of course Alfred is going to have to dispose of this stupid fucking animal, which has no symbolic significance for him? Zero. That he is going to have to THROW IT AWAY and BURN it, because it is a dead animal that is going to give someone RABIES or something. That page seriously cracked me up, because it perfectly fulfills the Hollywood axiom of be INEVITABLE yet SURPRISING. (If I was still arguing that Morrison was in a literary agon with Miller, this would be a great subversion of Year One, but I am declaring that fight over. Morrison never stood a chance, but he can still hold his head proud for kicking the crap out of Alan Moore's Man of Tomorrow story in All Star Superman).

The rest of the issue was not so good. The variant history thing where you acknowledge variant tellings of the story with "thats not how it happened I have seen before and seen better. I have certainly seen it DRAWN better by John Cassaday in Planetary/Batman. Mothman and Snake man did not do it for me. The art was occasionally charming (panels 2 and 4 of page 13 for example), but not by any means a favorite. The end reveal was OK, but as Tim Callahan points out, it refers to a book that came out long ago, and which I do not really remember anymore. Overall: a lukewarm comic book with one great page.

That's a tough call, Jason. I think that All Star Superman probably stands as the more essential of the two works because: 1.) it has an ending (although, Supreme's lack of a conclusion was no fault of Moore's) and 2.) it has consistently excellent visual story-telling throughout the run.

If Chris Sprouse had illustrated the entire run of Supreme, and if the final two issues of Moore's second year on the title had been published, Morrison would've had a much harder time topping him.

I think you could just submit the first twelve issues of Moore's run ("The Story of the Year"!) as something for comparison, because then the number matches that of Morrison's All-Star, and then you have a more complete story.

And yeah, art-wise, Supreme has some underwhelming bits. I still find that run more genuinely funny, fun and clever than what I've read of All-Star.

I concede that All-Star is better than "Whatever Happened," and "For the Man Who Has Everything," though.

I'm actually looking forward to the two part Neil Gaiman story "Whatever Happenned to the Caped Crusader" coming up... actually, it might be interesting to see how THAT stacks up to "Whatever Happenned to the Man of Tommorrow" since it's supposed to be kind of a take on that.

Part One is Batman #686, Part Two is Detective Comics #853, both come out in February.

In a recent interview, Dan Didio did that line about how "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" would be a perfect jumping-on point for people who saw The Dark Knight and wanted to check out some Batman comics. Probably not a great idea to publish it in two separate titles, then.

Well, he may not have specifically referenced Dark Knight, but it's implicit in any discussion about laypersons suddenly getting into Batman comics, right? And the DVD/Imax re-release is around now/soon, I think?

But yeah, that Batman R.I.P. was the ongoing storyline when the movie was in theatres... that's a whole other discussion (of dumbness).

Hey Guys, I read a very interesting review of this issue, that ONLY serious comic geeks could come up with.It put the whole issue and the whole RIP story line in a new light. You might want to check it out.

About Me

Geoff Klock has a big degree from a fancy-pants university. He wrote some books on superheroes and poetry like 10 years ago. Also essays on film, and TV and teaching. You have Google, right? He spoke at the Met once, and inspired a name of a villain in Matt Fraction's Casanova, which is a really good comic book. He made a crazy mash up of like 200 movie and TV clips quoting Hamlet. Geoff teaches mostly writing, but also Old Brit Lit and Film, at BMCC. He rides a bicycle to get there. He is very good at Facebook?

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Regular Guest Bloggers

Jason Powell has taken on the yeoman's job of doing an issue by issue analysis of Chris Claremont's 17 year Uncanny X-Men run in an effort to make me feel bad for saying Morrison invented all kinds of things he did not in his New X-Men run, and for spelling Claremont "Clairmont" in my superhero book.

Scott McDarmont (Scott91777) is an Instructor Of English at Radford University, Radford VA, an avid reader of books by guys named Chuck, he usually “waits for the trade” on comics unless Frank Miller is somehow involved. He owns more Def Leppard CDs than Bob Dylan CDs and he is ‘Ok’ with this and, while he may answer different publicly, he secretly feels that The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made. He also feels that there are two kinds of people in the world: Indiana Jones people and John McClane people. He considers himself an Indiana Jones person

Jill Duffy, girl reporter, is a professional writer and editor in New York. She spent five years covering video game development in both San Francisco and London, examining the art, science, and business of the industry, and in 2006 was named one of the top 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, where she was the food section editor, as well as Game Developer, Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise, DigitalTrends.com, and several other publications. She holds a BA in English from the University at Buffalo. Indeed, she is on the Twitter and also keeps a blog about food.

Andy Bentley is a graphic designer in upstate New York. The first series of Batman movies got him in a comic book store and the DC animated series made him a life long fan. His senior thesis was a short film on the culture of comic books. Animal Man, Starman, and Preacher are among his favorite comic runs. He is an avid toy collector and enjoys playing basketball, mash-ups, karaoke and dark beers. He will be sequestered most of September with The Beatles: Rock Band.